My unusual collection

[diddi]

i thought i would chat about my collection of chemical elements. its a bit of a shameless ad as well because if anyone else collects elements, maybe they would like to network... anyway, back to the elements. i have been collecting for 20 years or so and only have about 15 to go apart from the ones that are virtually impossible to get unless you are the dean at Berkley University. its a quite accessible collection, that people with no scientific knowledge find quite intriguing.

there are metals that melt on a warm day, or form wierd crystaline shapes, others that are so dense, a tennis ball sized lump would weigh over 3.5kgs. then there are metals so light they float on oil, and others so reactive, they explode in air, or so soft they can be sliced up with a kitchen knife.

there are shiney grey crystals that turn into purple gas without melting, blood red liquids that fill their container with red gas without boiling...

its all very interesting (to me at least).


if you have a collection to brag about, why not have a go now?

 

[VoG]

Well that is absolutely fascinating. Of course as a chemist I am interested in all elements but I never thought to collect them.

I think that iodine is my favorite - heat it and it sublimes into a purple gas.

For the transuranic elements I think that you would need your own reactor or resurrect Glenn Seaborg from the dead.

Again, absolutely interesting. In my work I look at trace elements in drinking water but we never try to isolate them.

 

[Colin Legg]

I love this idea. Where do you keep them and which ones are you missing? Where an element has several allotropes, do you collect them too? Have you lost any prized ones due to contamination/chemical reactions?

 

[diddi]

@VoG
i did B.Sc with Chem double major, so thats where i got the interest. iodine is great. i have some 3ml sample tubes with screw caps and if i see kids interested in the sciences i give them a crystal of iodine and they can drop it a cup of very hot water. instant kid pleasing demonstration especially when it all recrystalises on the sides of the tube. give them a bit of Hg in another sample tube and send them away with a much better appreciation of Chem. it can even get adults sucked in. anything to wave the flag, so to speak.

i have a few grams of UO2(NO3)2, but thats my only actidide, apart from a sample of material collected from under a nuclear test site in the 50s which is like a glassy volcanic remnant. it contains various isotopes of transuranics but i have never had it assayed. i have a report of the typical analysis from the era, but it is only 'typical' and does not really represent my sample. plus it has had 60 years to decay. i guess it will just end up a piece of lead in another 200000 years lol.

so far as a favourite goes - thats a tough one. there are some wonderful crystaline structures that make some metals truly spectacular. the bulk of my lanthanides are 4N and prepared by vacuum deposition, producing bizzare lumps, and there is of course Bi which would have to produce the most impressive display of any element. i love the reaction i get when inviting people to pick up my flask of Hg. its a bottle about the size of a 2litre coke bottle, but it weighs about 35kg.

i did some water chemistry in the swimming pool industry a while back and used to test for trace Cu etc plus usual pH bucket chemistry, but never environmental water.

@colin
i am working on a periodic table shaped display at the moment, and trying to choose the materials from which to build it (any suggestions welcome - think outside the box). they are a bit of a challenge to display for a variety of reasons. some require storage under oil, for example and others are toxic. then there is the issue of value. a pellet of rhenium 10mm wide and 12mm high cost me nearly 500. but its 40x less abundant than gold.

funilly enough, some of the ones i am missing are not that rare, but i just havent been able to negotiate to buy them at what i consider to be a reasonable price or they are difficult to buy. i had all sorts of trouble buying thallium, for example (cant imagine why LOL). rough list something like this (off the top of my head) B, P, Se, As, Sc, Rb, Cs, La, some of the platinum group i would like to get bigger samples as i only have a bit of wire or nothing at all. there are others i know i will never get, like Tc or Fr and i have no aspirations of ever getting the actidides.

i have sort of started to collect allotropes, like diamond, and sulfur, but have also tried to get different structures like Bi and have a couple of naturally occuring elements like native Cu and Au. Saw a great native Os sample recently, but was a few 0's short of the asking price.

so far as lost samples goes, the Group 1s are difficult to store and they look grungy even when stored under dried parrafin. my K is looking particularly aweful. i have never had a chemical reaction as i dont keep any gasses. there are only 2 with color anyway, and i can make Cl on demand, and wouldnt want to have F for obvious reasons. i did have a funny experience many years ago with bromine. Br has the most amazing ability to escape from virtually any container with a lid, and my sample disappeared whilst i wasnt looking. i have had to settle for a little ampule, but its better than nothing. many other metals go off in air, so i have to keep them in the supplied vac seals. but i am hoping to find some suitable storage or reagent bottles and enlist the services of a mate who has a TIG welder and free Argon for my use!

i am thinking to myself that i have written enough for 1 post. hope others find my raving of interest

 

[chuckchuckit]

I am not a chemist, but I worked for 2 PHD chemists for almost 10 years in a small company eons ago. Only about 5 of us when I first started there. They were the 2 chemists that were responsible for the oxygen regeneration system based on Zirconia and Platinum that was to separate CO2 into O2 and Carbon. It was to be used for the oxygen for the astronauts for the Mars space shot back in the 1960’s. Those two worked at Lockheed and were doing all the work so they decided to quit and start their own company and bid on the contract and actually got it instead of Lockheed. But then the space shot to Mars got cancelled. So they reversed the electrochemical process using Zirconia for generation oxygen, into using it to read oxygen concentrations in inert gases instead. I was just a wild 20 year old then that got intrigued by their analog circuits they were designing and pushing to the max to read these extremely accurate O2 readings for the early 1970’s. We finished its development into a production and sellable unit for medical and research uses. 40 years later they still sell that Oxygen Analyzer today except I am sure they digitized the circuits by now, but still the same Zirconia based sensor no doubt.
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Zirconia is a ceramic, but the only way we could cut the tubes was with a diamond saw. The tube was hollow and 1/2" wide yet took about half an hour to cut through with water running on the saw to keep the diamond blade from overheating. Working for PHD chemists was interesting to say the least. One of them was even wilder than me. Maybe it was all those chemicals?
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In chemistry class in high school (way back then) we used to pass around the chemicals to look at and we used to take the mercury out of the bottle and roll the mercury around in the palms of our hands. Lots of fun. I still have most of my teeth too... I hear they don’t let you do that in school any more.
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[diddi]

no, schools in .au have banned all but the most innocuous of chemicals. no mercury any more. oh well.

 

[Firefly2012]

Diddi, you saying that about H&S in schools, reminds me when I was a kid and the Chemistry teacher dropping sodium, lithium and potassium in some water behind a glass screen. That was fun! They don't allow that here now

 

[diddi]

no, a lot of its gone by the wayside. no volcanoes any more.

i was teaching in the 90s and already back then i was getting a wrist slapping for explosions and the like. but it encouraged kids to enjoy science, so it was worth it.

i used to deliberately demonstrate noxious experiments to annoy those in charge

 

[chuckchuckit]

Yes! The same teacher that let us roll the mercury around in our hands and on our desks, put Potasium (think it was Potasium) in water, and it exploded sending a mushroom cloud to the ceiling. We all thought he messed up, but perhaps it was planned afterall. lol

 

[VoG]

Yes! The same teacher that let us roll the mercury around in our hands and on our desks, put Potasium (think it was Potasium) in water, and it exploded sending a mushroom cloud to the ceiling. We all thought he messed up, but perhaps it was planned afterall. lol

We had a student teacher who did that only with sodium which he mistook for phosphorus (he had poor eyesight). As the explosion loomed he yelled "Get Out". Nobody was hurt, fortunately.